a constant chiaroscuro

amediting

Ok, disowning may be a harsh term, but I have finally found that healthy degree of separation from where I was as an author last year and where I am right now. I finally, finally, finally got serious with looking at Capacitance and doing a harsh critique. It has been very harsh. So far, I have wanted to chop pretty much every chapter I’ve gone through. This is a long way from last year when I’d just finished the book and was wantonly shopping it around to every agent out there–utterly terrifying first page and all.

Now, I have a process. I read the chapter, and don’t even really line edit as I feel like (for the first ten or so chapters at least) I will need to do an entire overhaul. Instead, I take notes of key points, concepts, character building and world building that I established in the chapter. This way, I re-align with my characters, story and world. So far, this method has already led to some great over-arching questions about the story and some specific modifications I know I want to make.

I am considering some major modifications. World-altering (their world, not ours), relationship-dynamic changing modifications. Now that I am a year away from birthing the precious first baby of a book, I can see some of the critiques agents were throwing around about the characters’ relationships being inorganic. There are some critiques that I am still a little iffy on, but as a whole I see where the agents were coming from and I think that’s a good thing. Their remarks may sting, but they are industry professionals–when all is said and done, they know what sells.

Sadly, many of the poetic metaphors and paragraphs of adjective-laden exposition do not sell. Reading through them again and at a distance, I can see why. Especially in the first few chapters, this dramatic use of language is not going to reel anyone it. It is going to bore them to death. Several times while editing, I found myself shaking my head saying to myself (aloud I might add!), “Ok, ok, I get it, you can do cool s&*t with words. Now get on with it!” If I am resorting to profanity over my own writing, I can only imagine what readers’ reactions would be!

It’s not all negative when I edit. I really am at a point where I feel very energized to go back and tackle the story from an entirely new vantage point. I know I can make it better. I know I have come a long way since last year. My prose has gotten cleaner, my story has developed to the point where I have much more of a world built up. I know I need to add suspense and stakes–now that I have had practice raising the stakes for the duration of the succeeding two books, I am more confident in my ability to do so. The key now is to try and gain some focus to actually channel this excitement and motivation. With all the activities and things going on in my life right now, finding focus might be the biggest struggle.

As is probably readily apparent to everyone due to lack of blog posts on here, my life has been a whirlwind. Aside from the launch of my second blog Luna Elise, which features my fashion addiction, my personal life has pretty much demanded the majority of my time. I can’t say I’m complaining–I’m probably having way too much fun, but the writing has taken a hit for sure.

This used to bother me more than it does now. I have grown to the point as an author where I understand no one is going to strike you down with wrath if you don’t finish one chapter per day. I will admit, I’m still finding that balance, but I find that not leaving room for burnout to creep in lets the ideas flow more freely. Plus, it allows for more strategic planning which is a crucial step in the final stages of a trilogy.

These final stages have me asking some big questions, and thinking things through before writing. For once, I find myself weighing alternatives and unable to decide what is best for the story. This is very different to my usual “word vomit” method of writing whatever comes banging out of my mind. Right now, one of the biggest decisions I am struggling with is whether or not to kill off one of my secondary characters. Morbid, I know, but it is a post-apocalyptic story. I feel like it could use a little more darkness right now.

However, this character I am considering offing is undeniably a figure of light in the books. I think I like this secondary character more than my main characters! You always hear stories of authors literally crying as they write in the death of a favorite character (I think this happened with J.K. Rowling and Fred Weasley, but I could be just making that up entirely!). I understand sometimes it needs to happen for dramatic effect, but I don’t want the dramatic effect to be overridden by the anger I am sure readers will feel. This is the equivalent of Gandalf falling to the balrog but not coming back–this character will be missed!

Ultimately, I think it comes down to whether the character will be of importance or useful to the story as it plays out. There is a potential conflict that could use this character, but that also could be omitted. You can see the back and forth is very prevalent right now. I can’t make any decisions as of now! Perhaps this hesitation is my writerly subconscious screaming at me not to kill the character (yet anyway).

The title says it all. I had an extremely productive weekend working on all sorts of projects and releasing a lot of pent up creativity. I worked on an oil painting, started my new fashion blog (lunaelise.com for those interested), and wrote. The hours flew by in the creative zone that we artists know so well and strive for.

With my mind so stimulated by creating, Resistance was at the height of my consciousness. While out on a nice, long run, my mind tuned into my story instead of the usual jumble of everyday life situations and worries. I came up with a concept that I think is going to propel me to the ending of the trilogy. While I still don’t know the exact ending, I think this gives me another pivotal plot point to work to. I find I work better when I’m working up to some event. Actually I get frustrated at times because I want to just write that big scene I’m leading up to–and I want to write it now!!

This pacing might be the biggest lesson I have learned as a writer. In my writer’s block times, I would get frustrated plodding through these leading up moments, just wanting to get to the events already. Then I would lose patience with myself and my willpower went down the drain thinking of the at the time insurmountable amount of work I had to do to convey the exciting story in my head.

However, if this weekend is any example, I’m able to take on any task. Perhaps I just need to focus my creativity a bit more efficiently so I can balance all these different endeavors. So I’m approaching this week with the goal of finding balance–I hope you all have a peaceful and balanced week as well.

I just made a list of the key points I have to wrap up to finish the Capacitance trilogy. There are 14 of them (so far), the last one of which being “The state of the world.” So that’s intimidating; cue me running away from my computer, never to write again. Just kidding–maybe.

The other 13 points are a bit more doable. Most of them are comprised of characters. Obviously I will have to tie up Mara and Runey’s story lines as well as all the secondary characters. I listed some tertiary characters on the list as well. At this time, I am not sure how relevant they will end up being to the endgame of my story, but listing them was more of a device to remind me what tools I have in my toolbox, so to speak.

Time for a little writing secret. I didn’t figure this out until basically just now (embarrassingly enough). Employing characters you’ve already introduced to come into plot play down the road makes you look like a genius-level author. Look at J.K. Rowling–that tiara from the Sorcerer’s Stone comes out of nowhere as a horcrux in the last book. Was she planning this all along or did she come to a point in her story where she needed a horcrux so she plucked one out of the existing scenery she had created? We may never know, but in my case it would have been the latter situation. You should all know by now most of my writing is improvisational, so characters, settings, actions all spew out of their own accord. Now that I’m nearing the end of the trilogy, I have the luxury of flipping back through these characters and scenarios I have created and deciding how best to use them. That obscure character from midway through Capacitance? Maybe she will come back and play an intrinsic part in the resolution of the trilogy, leaving readers to wonder at my strategic placement and planning (ha!).

To summarize, I think using this strategy will help me organize my thoughts, discover new creative ideas and ultimately give a well-rounded feel to the trilogy as a whole. Time to go crank out some exciting installments!

I posted earlier this week about being energized, so now I am happy to say I have had a good writing week as a result. Yesterday was a great writing session. I had been working on Chapter 19, and it was the same old routine. I start it out, knowing everything that needs to happen and then it stagnates halfway through because I get bored with the writing. Typically this is because it is deciding action leading up to some exciting action that I can’t wait to write about. I’m impatient to get there and so I end up getting frustrated and letting it sit. This week is a victory because while this happened twice, I made myself go back each time and slog through it. Thus, I have two finished chapters here on Friday and that is something that hasn’t happened in a long time!

Yesterday, when I sat down to hammer out the rest of 19, one of these great moments occurred where your characters take over your brain and your fingers type out some crazy stuff you hadn’t planned on. For the first time, I was writing an entire chapter in the POV of one of my secondary characters. This refreshing change naturally leads to better character development, but the end of the chapter spelled out some feelings that I had never anticipated putting into words. So now there is another layer in my plot, and that was much needed. Now the reader will go into the big action scene coming up with yet another layer of dramatic tension in their mind. That’s always a good thing. There is still quite a ways to go, but I have mapped out a couple defining events that should propel things forward faster. And all the characters should be back in one general setting soon, so that is sure to provide some dramatic material.

The world is a noisy busy place. Constantly, we are surrounded by facets of distraction. Our phone needs monitored for pivotal social media updates, our dogs need to go for a walk, that work project deadline is looming. It’s hard to find space to create in all this jumble. Being a writer, it is even more challenging as my canvas is attached to the prime agent of distraction–my computer/the internet. Some days I sit down and feel like I can’t have a coherent thought, let alone finish a sentence.

It’s easy to get caught up and find yourself at the end of the week with nothing of creative merit stacked up to your name, and then get funneled into the weekend hoping to just relax for a moment. When our minds are so busy like this, downtime and relaxation are important, but when you’re a creative, even vegging out in front of the TV can cause anxiety because you know you could be putting your mind to better use.

Or at least that’s how my brain functions. If yours is anything like mine, you know the feeling. But you also need to recognize the power of sub-cognitive functions. While you are lounging on the couch, stuffing your face with pizza and downing wine, perhaps the film you are watching will inspire you in ways you never would have thought. During those extra lazy hours of sleeping in on Sunday, you might have a dream which solidifies a loose end of a story line. Our brains are working all the time, and are naturally focused on matters most important to us. As creative souls, these matters tend to be our art.

If this still isn’t reassuring, and your brain works like mine on twelve layers at once like some really magnificent cake, then consider this. Even when I am working on tax forms, balancing the books, planning a fashion blog, and playing fetch with my bulldogs in some chaotic ballet of working from home, my novel’s story is ALWAYS in the back of my mind. I don’t have to peel away many layers to discover the thread. My mind is continually churning away at it, waiting for that facet to be brought to the forefront when I finally close out of Facebook and open up Microsoft Word–even if that takes a couple days.

Lately I have been experiencing a much-needed burst of energy in my life in general, but also in my writing. The ideas for the ending of my trilogy are still not quite there, but I have enough of an interesting fomentation of concepts that I am comfortable enough to continue blazing forward (hopefully into a sunset of glory that is a perfect ending to the trilogy).

Aside from my renewed motivation to work on Resistance, Capacitance has also sparked some interest in my mind again. I received an email from an agent who requested to see it at the WLT conference last June (yes, it sometimes takes them THAT long to respond). It was a very nice rejection email. Even though it was a rejection, the key statement I grabbed was, “I think this is a story with legs.” To me, after months of wallowing in the despair of the over-saturated dystopian lit market, this was music to my starving ears! This agent is looking for smart science fiction, and he sees potential in my story. He also saw my not-pub ready narration. If you are a first-time author reading this, I cannot stress this enough–DO NOT, DO NOT (SERIOUSLY DO NOT) SUBMIT YOUR WORK UNTIL YOU HAVE EDITED AND EDITED SOME MORE AND PROBABLY REWRITTEN IT!!! We all do it; we get into a frenzy thinking we are going to be the next Stephen King, our parents/grandparents/etc are telling us we ARE going to be the next Stephen King (actual thing my Grandpa said the other day. Sigh). This frenzy of foreseen fame inflates our egos and has us pressing send on a blind query email and attached sample work from a loosely edited first draft.

I’m being so scathing because I have been there. Despite reading several articles, blog posts, etc. which said the same thing I just vehemently exhorted above. For instance, this agent who just emailed me liked my story, but didn’t like my narration. If I had edited more carefully and spent some time curating a truly polished story would the outcome of that email have been different? Luckily with this agent, I had established a personal connection with him due to actually meeting him at the conference. He is a really nice guy who came off as a jerk when I asked him a question on day one of the conference. On the last day he came up, and apologized for his stand-offishness and asked me to send my work. So when I got his rejection email, I didn’t feel any qualms about sending him a follow up email. I kept it short (key to interaction with agents, by the way), told him I now realized I had jumped the gun on submitting the story, then asked if he would be interested in seeing Capacitance again after a rewrite. The answer, which arrived a mere two days later–much better response time!–was “Sounds great Elise.” This may not amount to anything, but I am more energized to do a rewrite since I know this agent has an interest in my story and has agreed to have a look at it again upon rewrite (HUGE!!).

I put this out in the last blog post, and I will put the call out again. If any of my readers have free time or interest in reading Capacitance and providing me with critique that goes beyond just copy editing, but goes into the scope and feel of the story as a whole, please let me know! I have a few people (outside of my overly supportive nepotistic family) reading it right now and I have found that to be very helpful. After a couple months the sound of rewrite doesn’t sound so terrifying!

When one hears the titles “A Farewell to Arms” or “Jane Eyre,” it is common to think of a literature course. However, these classics have another thing in common–they were both instant bestsellers when they were first released. A friend of mine sent me an email which raised the question, how does a novel go from the bestseller list to the reading list of the classics?

There is no question that Bronte’s classic bildungsroman (coming of age) story and Hemingway’s perfect, crisp prose are works of art. Only a true work of art would inspire the literally throw-the-book-across-the-room rage I felt upon finishing a Farewell to Arms. I can and have written essays on both the content and literary merits of both these novels. However, the question lingers when looking at today’s “popular” fiction. Bronte and Hemingway topped the charts in their respective days, but what about the bestselling books now? Will Twilight and The Hunger Games hit the college classrooms in the future?

This brings up the interesting dichotomy that has sprung up between commercial (think Stephen King, James Patterson) and literary fiction (Ian McEwan, Celeste Ng). Our bestseller lists now are topped with mostly books from the commercial fiction category. Sometimes a literary fiction title will cross over–for example, The Lovely Bones–but usually we are looking at quick reads. As an author and a lover of literature and words, I would be saddened to think that future generations will be studying the literary intricacies of The Hunger Games. I’ll be the first to admit I am a big fan of this series of books and the films, but do I see them as literary art–no.

However, there are valuable popular books that absolutely should end up being studied by posterity. For example, anything by J.K. Rowling is masterful in both her deceptively simple use of the language and her plot development. As an author myself, I try to incorporate a slightly elevated use of the English language into my decidedly commercial fiction novels. There’s no reason to dumb work down–I’m not producing novels for the sole purpose of the sale, the movie deal, the get rich quick dream that many strive for.

I can’t say what the future of literary education and the classics will entail, but one thing I know for certain–future students will almost certainly have a cinematic version of their material to view. Movie day in class is always fun, right?

To end this drought of blog posts, I am exploring another kind of ending which has occupied my thoughts not just today, but for several months now. How do you end a series of novels? I am coming up on this with the Capacitance series as I am about halfway into the manuscript of the final book. It’s an issue that I have avoided since the first word I put on the page of the first novel. My characters came out onto the page and began their stories, got more developed and are all hurtling towards…something?

If you’ve read any of my previous blog posts, you know that my writing style is improvisational. There is no master outline in my office delineating each twist, turn and conclusion of the Capacitance series. My mind has continually surprised me as I go through the writing process by providing these different plot twists and basically showing me where the story is going next. However, here at the end of all things (to quote Frodo Baggins) my improvisational brain is not coming through for me.

As a writer, I go through a lot of self confidence issues with my writing. My mind must turn each idea over and over and go back and forth with an argument on whether these words or ideas are even fit for paper before I can sit down and write. Ending my series is like a giant combination of all these insecurities combined. Will readers like this ending? How the heck do I take so many big issues and solve them all in a satisfying way? Is this idea exciting enough? These are just some of the questions hindering my progress.

Unsurprisingly, I am thinking about it too much. WAY too much. I have half a book left to get it done, after all. The biggest challenge here is just sitting down and getting back to it. I know I have talked about getting into other genres, but I really want to at least take the plot in Resistance to the next step so that it doesn’t totally lose momentum.

If anyone out there is interested in CP’ing or just reading 2.5 manuscripts, I think something really helpful here would be having someone to bounce ideas off of for a potential ending. If this sounds like something you would be interested in doing, drop me a line! 🙂

It is Wednesday, and on this Wednesday I am going to take the theme of a book that inspired me as a writer and twist it a little bit. Today I am going to talk about a book that didn’t exactly inspire me, but it definitely made me think as an author!

The book–or series, rather–that I am going to discuss is the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. My unpopular opinion: it wasn’t that great. However, I did (eventually) feel compelled to read all 8 books that the series has so far. And it did inspire me to write an entire blog post on the series, so there is something to be said. Let’s dive into it.

First of all, I picked the first novel in the series up at an airport (on my way to the Vegas writing conference), and I nearly ditched it in the plane when I landed. The writing was slow and wordy, the plot didn’t catch me right away, for the first time in my life I was about to abandon a book! But I didn’t. However, it took me a long time to get through the first book for reasons I already named added to the fact that I found the story line implausible. Maybe this is my cynical side taking over, but who would stay in the 18th century over the 20th century simply for love? This isn’t very generous to more romantic sensibilities, but throughout the entire series I found this to be a hard hurdle to get past. If it were me, I don’t think I would give up present day safety and technology advances.

Secondly, the books made me angry and frustrated on my journey as a writer. Here I am all year desperately trying to get published while reading these books that have been wildly successful. Should have been an inspiration, right? It was not. While I got back letters from agents admonishing my use of adverbs and exposition, Gabaldon’s prose mocked me with its casual use of verb modifiers and excessive description of her characters’ hair color. Most pointedly in contrast–her characters used elevated language and highly eloquent word choice, while Capacitance was being criticized for characters “not talking like actual people.”

Essentially, it seemed that Gabaldon does not follow the so-called “rules” that are supposed to apply to aspiring authors. While I admire her intelligence and obviously vast knowledge of the historical periods about which she writes, I found her characters and her choices for the plot a little hard to swallow and, at times, to stay awake for (over 100 pages dedicated to the events of one day, hmm..).

Now to give Gabaldon credit, which I must do! I did read every one of the books, and I will read the subsequent books when they come out (I believe there are supposed to be 2 more). This speaks to her as an author because she has created a compelling story line (even though the plausibility doesn’t sit right with me at times). I want to know what happens to these characters and I will slog through the slow parts just to finally see what happens. At the end of the day, Gabaldon is a successful author and businesswoman because of this–she has created a marketable product and essentially has free range to “break the rules” and write however she wants, and isn’t that the ultimate goal?